5 Tips For Making Better Sounding Drums

Today, various tools can help you mix your drum sounds. A vast palette of different compressors, equalizers, and unique dynamic tools like transient shapers will help you to achieve better-sounding drums. In the following five tips, we will discuss other equally important aspects that are inevitable when it comes to drum mixing.  

1. Phase Issues

Phasing issues are especially tricky when it comes to live drum sounds. Many of us are often jumping right to the dynamic processing of the drums and leaving a fundamental thing like phase alignment aside. Considering this, one should first take care of that and start immediately. It is crucial to pay attention to the positioning of the microphones and how they interact. Some handy software tools are available for this task, so I encourage you to explore this subject.  

2. Sample Layering

"I don't use samples. I only record live drums in my mixes. "- we've all heard this sentence one time too many. It is excellent to deal with live drum elements, but today's availability of many pre-recorded drum samples you can layer could greatly enrich your drum mixes. Using samples is not cheating but rather a great way of reinforcing your existing drum sequence. Whether you use them to emphasize some aspects like the kick drum or a snare drum or to get rid of the bleed, samples can open up an endless palette of tones that can be highly beneficial to your drum production.

3. Getting Rid of the Excessive Sounds

Sometimes, it's best to mute excessive sounds in your drum sequence. Initially, you will probably think the drums don't sound powerful enough, but producing an excellent drum mix with fewer elements is far more manageable. Besides that, there is usually no need for excessive microphones to be used to record drum sounds. A reasonable amount of microphones, a couple of overheads, and a couple of close microphones will do just fine.  

4. Moderate Reverb Use

When soloed, drums with reverb sound outstanding. Reverb gives them that incredible sense of space and fullness that drums should have. However, they can easily get lost in the mix with other song elements. Generally, using reasonable amounts of the reverb effect on individual components would be best. For example, you can mix drum elements without reverb until they sound united. After that, try to use reverb on elements with shorter decay. This will introduce depth to your drums without making them too muddy.  

5. Placing Drums All Over the Frequency Spectrum

Drums are significant parts of almost every song and should be heard across the entire frequency spectrum. Having excellent drum tones in only one part of the frequency spectrum is always a shame. This advice can also be applied to other elements in the mix. It will be much easier to mix everything else after you take care of the drums and mix everything else according to them.